Geeky Peek

On March 10th, Peek made its official splash into India. Partnering with Aircel, Peek is attempting to bring affordable messaging to the masses in India.

I’ve always loved the Peek story for developing markets. In India (and many other places), contracts and postpaid aren’t readily prevalent. You pay full-price for devices generally. So $400 iPhones, BlackBerries, and the likes are generally too expensive for the common person or even for the common business. When I was working with Digicel in the Caribbean, BlackBerries were generally only for the exec team (and a few high-performing sales guys).

Well, Aircel agreed with us, so over a year ago we started down the road of launching Peek nation-wide in India. Not only is Aircel launching Peek, but they are also kicking off a massive marketing campaign as well.

In the industry there are a lot of people watching this event. The idea of affordable smartphones, or smart featurephones, for the developing world is a big upcoming initiative for many of the handset makers. Peek is one of the first “big” global launches of a product aimed at this category. If things go well, I’d expect you’ll see Peek and other Peek-like products start rolling out in countries across the world.